NFL in L.A. means No Football Looming

The 17-year pro football drought in Los Angeles is on the verge of turning 18.

Or, as some of us prefer to call it, The Golden Era.

The San Diego Chargers will not activate the escape clause in their Qualcomm Stadium lease for 2012.

That does not mean that either L.A. stadium site couldn't lure the St. Louis Rams, Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings or Jacksonville Jaguars in the interim.

Neither does it remove the Chargers from the equation permanently.

But, at last, the Chargers and San Diego officials seem to be reading from the same book.

They both favor a downtown site near Petco Park, home of the Padres, and not far from the convention center.

Ideally, the Chargers would like the stadium to abut an expanded convention center and become the favored West Coast site for Super Bowls and Final Fours, but they'll take what they can get at the moment.

Even more ideally, the Chargers can almost envision the stadium to be financed through the city's sale and redevelopment of the Qualcomm and Sports Arena sites, and the income therein, plus revived NFL stadium fund investments, plus existing city and/or county funds, plus their own contribution.

If they could do all that without resorting to a ballot measure, that would be Tebow-to-Thomas in overtime.

Usually, the toughest step for a stadium project is the first one. Once the outline is there, the wheels eventually turn, particularly when it means keeping a franchise that has carried San Diego sports since 1961.

Meanwhile, Farmers Field remains a name without a place.

There never has been anything inevitable about the NFL's return to Los Angeles, either to Philip Anschutz's L.A. Live/Convention Center site or to Ed Roski's sidehill lie in the City of Industry.

There always has been a lot of wishful journalism about this, because no one in the hinterlands can believe our area can rationally function without the NFL.

Even when Houston had an existing stadium and L.A. did not, some professional typists were shocked when the NFL incubated the Houston Texans and not the Los Angeles Figments.

Connie Bruck of The New Yorker profiled Anschutz this week and included this quote from Eric Grubman, the NFL's executive vice president of business ventures: "It's unlikely the league or a team would approve this proposal" from Anschutz, which would mean giving Anschutz a minority share of a team for 50 percent of its value and also letting him pocket much of the new stadium's revenue.

Grubman did say he had suggested other avenues for Anschutz and had "some optimism" that it eventually could get done.

Roski, meanwhile, has scaled down his ambitions toward part-ownership and now is believed to be more interested in simply bringing football back and getting credit for it, especially if it means that Anschutz, his former partner, can't.

. He has said he can start shoveling the minute a team commits to L.A. So why wait? Better to fire up the bulldozers now. A living, existing stadium is difficult to resist.

The Raiders? Owner Mark Davis reaffirmed he wants to hang on to his father's team and that he needs a new stadium ASAP. Obviously he'll look at L.A., since Al Davis never quit flirting with his former home, but some NFL people think the Raiders will become tenants in the 49ers' new Santa Clara stadium.

The Rams? They can leave Edward Jones Dome after the 2014 season if the stadium is judged to be outside the NFL's "first tier," whatever that means. By Feb. 1, the city must give the Rams a stadium improvement plan. But the city has three years to get it right. Even if the Rams leave, the language of the lease is so nebulous that the fear of lawsuits might spook Anschutz or Roski.

The Jaguars? Their stadium lease runs through 2030, but the Jaguars can escape it for about $60 million if they can show they have lost money in one season and stood below the league's revenue average in the next two years. Shahid Khan bought the Jaguars for $760 million in November and has professed loyalty to Jacksonville, although nothing in his deal forces him to stay. No move is imminent.

The Vikings? Their Metrodome lease has expired, but there are nine stadium proposals in various legislative inboxes, and owner Zygi Wilf already has bought downtown Minneapolis property in anticipation of a new park.

Expansion? If it is even on Roger Goodell's imaginary docket, it's somewhere behind remote-control quarterbacking and a red, white and blue ball. With static supply, the league is reveling in all this pent-up demand.

And an entire L.A. generation has grown up without ever knowing the traffic, noise, detritus and inebriation of an NFL Sunday.

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